For Ris, because I love her huge amounts and I wish I could hug her.
Disclaimer: today I tidied my room. SHOCKED GASP.
"I can't see it." Javier Esposito whines, tilting the picture this way and that. "Are you even sure it's there?"
"It's that peanut shaped blob," Kevin Ryan says, not for the first time and probably not for the last, "Javi, seriously, you need your eyes testing."
"Well, it's alright for you." Esposito grumbled. "You're used to ultrasounds."
Beckett shook her head and leaned around Esposito to point at said peanut shaped blob. "There. That's the baby."
"Aw, Beckett! He's got your nose!"
Beckett rolled her eyes and plucked the ultrasound from his fingers. "You can't even see his nose. He doesn't have a nose."
"How do you know it's a he?" Ryan queries, perching on the edge of her desk.
"Dunno. Mother's instinct. Didn't Jenny always say you were going to have a daughter?"
"Mm, that's true. What does Castle think?"
"Green, three-headed alien with the ability to shoot lasers out of his fingers. That's what Castle wants. Except Castle is going to be very disappointed when this baby is not a three-headed alien with lasers coming out of his fingers. He is going to be a perfectly happy and healthy human baby."
"I don't know," muses Esposito, "it's looking a lot like it's getting three heads."
"See!" Castle grins, turning to look at Beckett. "We are having a three headed baby!"
"We are not having a three headed baby." She insists, not even bothering from looking up from the file on her desk. "There is no such thing as a three headed baby, and if there was such a thing, I am not having it."
"Maybe it was going to be triplets, and three heads formed but only one body and now they're all fused together." Ryan injects, having his own look at the new ultrasound. "Is that possible?"
"No." Beckett retorted. "There is one baby, with one head. It is not green, it is not an alien. And it doesn't shoot lasers out of its fingers."
"So, now it's an it, and not a he?"
"It keeps changing its mind." She grumbled. "Yesterday was a boy, today it doesn't know. And tomorrow-"
"Will be a green, three headed alien." Castle interrupts, but he's already ducking as she aims a pen at his head.
"Is she okay?" Ryan asks Castle one morning as they huddle around the conference room table with coffee mugs. "The lack of coffee isn't going to her brain is it?"
"Oh, no. Well, it is. But baby wouldn't stop kicking last night. She's tired. And grumpy, and wants coffee and a full English breakfast."
"And you didn't make her one?" Esposito questions, raising an accusing eye at Castle. "Dude. She's your wife."
"It was half two in the morning!" Castle defends. "And I was asleep. I would have made her one if she'd woke me up. I made her one this morning, anyway. Only apparently it wasn't the same. Which is ridiculous because a full English breakfast is a full English breakfast."
Ryan laughs. "Oh, don't mess with the pregnant lady's cravings. Don't mess with a pregnant lady full stop. They are scary. Like, seriously. When Jenny was pregnant the second time, this kid, couldn't have been more than three accidentally ran into her. He was only small and he barely touched her, but I swear she actually growled. Poor thing was terrified. I was terrified."
"You don't mess with Beckett whether she's pregnant or not." Castle points out, rising up on his chair so he can peer through the blinds at her. "I think she's going to kill me every time I have a cup of coffee in the morning."
"Well, that's just mean. Teasing the animals." Espo shakes his head, and then points a stern finger at Castle. "Don't you dare tell her that I compared her to an animal. She'll rip my head off."
"I said she would be a girl."
"Actually," Castle points out, "you said he would be a boy."
"And then she changed her mind. Every day. And anyway, you were way off the mark with the three heads and the alien and the green. And she doesn't shoot lasers out of her fingers."
"Maybe she'll grow into them."
"If I wasn't so tired I would hit you."
Castle hums, and looks down at the bundle of soft pink blankets in his arms, the tiny human barely visible underneath the many folds. Eleanor Castle. Ellie for short. She's the smallest baby he thinks he's ever seen, and it scares him just how small she is, but the doctors say she's okay. Carried to term, she's got a powerful set of lungs on her. She's his littlest girl. Soft, downy hair and large blue eyes, a tiny hand that just about wraps around his thumb. She's gorgeous.
And she does have Kate's nose.